What is Plaid?
- Company: Plaid
- Homepage: https://plaid.com
- Industry:Financial Technology (Fintech)
- Problem:Financial applications struggle to securely access and integrate with users’ banking data across thousands of financial institutions.
- Solution:Plaid provides a unified API layer that enables secure connections between financial apps and over 12,000 financial institutions, streamlining account authentication and data access.
- Differentiation:Plaid’s seamless integration process, extensive banking network coverage, and developer-friendly tools create a superior technical infrastructure compared to traditional banking connectivity solutions.
- Customer:
Fintech developers, financial services companies, payment platforms, and businesses that need secure connectivity to financial institution data. - Business Model:Plaid generates revenue through API call fees, subscription models for different service tiers, and transaction-based pricing for payment initiation and account verification services.
Plaid is a financial technology company founded in 2013 by Zach Perret and William Hockey that provides the essential infrastructure linking financial applications with users’ bank accounts. Think of Plaid as the invisible middleware powering many of the financial services you likely use daily—whether you’re sending money through Venmo, managing investments on Robinhood, or tracking expenses with Truebill.
At its core, Plaid offers APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) that enable developers to securely connect their applications to users’ financial accounts. Their flagship products include:
- Auth – Verifies account and routing numbers for setting up direct deposits or payments
- Identity – Confirms user identity using banking information
- Balance – Provides real-time account balance information
- Transactions – Delivers transaction history with enriched data
- Assets – Verifies assets for lending and underwriting
- Payments – Facilitates ACH transfers and payment initiation
The company connects with over 11,000 financial institutions and has integrated with more than 5,500 applications. In 2020, Visa announced plans to acquire Plaid for $5.3 billion, though the deal was later abandoned due to regulatory concerns. Today, Plaid operates as an independent company valued at over $13 billion and continues to expand its services across North America and Europe.
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